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REVIEWS
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ROCTOBER
MAGAZINE, Winter 2007
Under appreciated genius is a bittersweet tragedy! I love hearing
these late/Beatles/inspired troubadours do their thing, and I wish
more of you got to hear them.
HIROSHIMA
YEAH!, May 2007
This new release from Chicago singer-songwriter Dan Susnara (his
first self-produced CD—all previous albums were on cassette) kicks
off with JUST the sort of song that's GUARANTEED to get a good review
in HY!—an ADORABLE, country-fied, acoustic, running-away-from-everything-and-drinking
song called "Kiss 'n' Park"; which is instantly cherishable and
singalongable and even brings to mind GG Allin with the lines 'never
thinkin' 'bout tomorrow, always livin' for today, never makin' no
commitments, always runnin'. Next up is "Disgruntled Former Everything",
a blistering attack on corporate America (and especially that moron
Bush), and after that comes the swinging "Eurekahead" which has
some nice brassy keyboard parps. "Wait For Someone Who Saves" is
a lilting, lovely paen to a sad stranger in a bar and is the best
song here (possibly Susnara's best EVER). With great lines like
'we collect like the dust and the spiderwebs crowding corners and
eaves' and 'scared of my shadow's shadow', the greatest compliment
I can give this song is that I wish I'd written it myself. It's
a KILLER and (along with the first track) has been on 'repeat' here
a LOT. "Lennon" starts as a slow and sedate tribute to the great,
crushed Beatle before descending into White Album style chaos and
"While in Borneo" continues the theme by having weird, trippy lyrics
that don't appear to make any sense whatsoever. I like the stripped-down
tinklings and oddness of this track. "Principles That Endure" quickens
the pace somewhat with a bitter tale of anti-work angst ('fill my
days with commitments and trite, meaningless drivel') which should
raise a smile, if not a sigh, with anyone who's ever worked for
'the man'. "Shift Change" is a funny/sad story about suburban kids
and their teenage drug adventures while "Lost Every Day" updates
their story from an adult perspective, in a smoky, jazzy number
with some adventurous changes and instrumentation. The hilariously
titled "Lo-Rent Boy" is a bit of a tragi-rocker which treats us
to great lines like 'I do the weird stuff the other guys won't do'
before sadly concluding that 'it's better than sleepin' alone'.
"Resume" obliquely references a lost love affair and is sweetly
plaintive in a resigned kind of way. "Strap On a Guitar (And Save
the World)" intertwines the personal and the political in an epic,
slowly building ballad which, again, throws down some impressive
lyrics ('they'd gladly have us all attached dick-and-balls to computers/serving
kings, weak humbled trite/'lest we start to think and start to fight')
and ends on a note of defiant optimism. Brilliant. This would have
been a perfect end to the album, in fact, but there's one last song
and that song is "Done", a nightmarish tale of some mad bitch who's
'howling with visions in a place of remote decay'. It should also
be stated that this CD comes with a nice lyric booklet containing
colour photos of various desolate US locations. Check out the website
or, better still, send some dollars to Dan at 7806 S Kilpatrick,
Chicago, IL 60652, USA to get yourself a copy.—Mark Ritchie |
